A Little Ring Rage. No big deal.

May 1, 2012

Somewhere on this blog, there are pictures of me in a bikini. I know people see them because the terms “bikini dare” crop up in my search terms at least once a week. Originally I posted the “before” pictures as a way to scare myself into getting in shape. If I faced the flab, I would get my jiggly bits into the gym. And it worked. I dropped about 25 lbs (give or take) and am a few sizes smaller.It also means I’ll never run for political office.

But I digress.

Then I plateaued. I’ve been the same weight for about a year now and I’m not at my goal. I just got to a comfortable weight I guess. No surprise, it’s the weight I was at for a while before I had kids. My body seems comfortable at this weight.

But I’m not done. I don’t want to be “smaller” or “thinner”… I want to be stronger, healthier, and fitter. My best guess is that if I lost 15 more pounds, I’d be at my ideal weight. Or my ideal jean size, which feels better than a number on a scale.

So what is a gal to do? What other shocking thing can I do to force my hand into weight loss?

I got nuthin’.

Maybe I just need to slow down and not think of things as being so intense and extreme and just eat as well as I can. Exercise as much as I can. Relax.

Nah.

I started taking boxing lessons a couple of weeks ago. It’s really more of a boxing workout. About 3/4 of the class time is spent doing a really hard circuit that mixes cardio and bodyweight exercises. The gym seems really warm so by 20 min in I’m literally dripping sweat.

And then the fun begins because I get to hit things. Well. I get to hit the coach’s pads as hard as I can and hope he doesn’t tell me “yeah, that sucked”. Which sometimes he does. Which is awesome. Because I don’t like someone patting me on the head and saying “good try little girl”. I like to be challenged.

Last week there was a different coach and instead of just hitting pads… we hit each other. Not a lot. Just a little bit. Which, trust me, is enough. I’m new to the group so when everyone paired off with their buddies… I was left standing in the middle of the ring alone.

You know what that means?

Yeah… I get to partner with the coach.

First he has about zero body fat and veins I could put an IV in with my eyes closed from 3 feet away. Second, he looks kind of mean until he smiles, but when he puts his hands up to box… I kind wanted to run away. I couldn’t look him in the eye he was that scary looking.

So, blocking a jab.

This involves me putting my hands up to protect my face. Then he jabs with his right (at my face) and I parry or block by kind of batting away at his glove with my right.

Riiiight.

This is how it went. He jabs. I try to block. He hits my glove into my own face.

Fun, right?

Then came the body shots.

Let me just say that the last time I did body shots it wasn’t boxing. Just sayin’. (It was also a loooong time ago!)

There’s supposed to be blocking with your elbows. You’re supposed to still protect your face. It was a lot of dancing around and trying not to look the scary man in the eye and sometimes blocking with my boobs.

Then he paired us up with others and we practiced. The girl I was sparring with seemed about as new and as good (ha!) as I am. So we started in on each other and… well… I have to say there was a small peanut of panic in my chest.

Someone was hitting me.

HITTING ME.

I wanted them to stop. And not just stop, but I mean, I wanted to stop her. I wanted to punch her in the head and kick her and squash her and Make Her Stop Hitting Me.

It’s like my inner toddler came out and she had a temper tantrum and she had boxing gloves and she wanted to get all up in the grill of this girl.

Rage. Serious rage.

Someone was hitting me, yo! She needed to get back and get out of my face before I snapped! I wasn’t sure exactly I was going to do… you know I’m not really a fighter. There might have been some kicking. Or tripping. Maybe scratching. And I could have sat on her, I think I had a good 30 lbs on her…

Luckily, I squashed that peanut of panic and continued to spar like a normal person. Normalish person. A normalish person with an odd amount of rage.

Comments

Good for you! Much braver than I. When it got to the “sparring” portion of martial arts…I quit. Chickened out. Ran for cover. Like a little girl. I was too afraid of exactly what you wrote about. That it would hurt. And then, I would want to hurt the other person, badly. Lose control like.

Well, you’ve given me hope. Don’t know that I will act on it, but that little shred of light still burns. Thanks!

Who is Red?

I'm Heather Cook, a writer in Calgary, Alberta. I am the mother of two children (boy-13, girl-8). I work in EMS and am a former horse trainer. I've written two non-fiction books on horses and over 300 articles on a plethora of topics. You can email me at hlcook@shaw.ca or connect through your preferred medium above!

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